MAC Wk 1 Comments to Classmates Blogs - Copyright laws

Here is Katie Ross original post and my comment:

I feel like at this point we should all be well aware of what is copyright and what is fair use. I know my industry (education) and my company takes both of these subjects very serious and frowns upon anyone who violates the policy. As an educator if we don’t uphold the rules regarding copyright and fair use why would our students want to uphold the same policies? I love that my place of work takes these 2 things very serious and even holds continuing education classes about these 2 topics to keep all of the staff and faculty up to date on the rules. So this in not a topic that just gets swept under the rug in my environment, and no one turns their head and looks the other way if they see another teacher breaking the policy. What is it like in your environment? Photo from opensourceway's photostream via flickr. Another reason why I think the company I work for takes these policies so seriously is because we have a lot of material that is copyrighted and we don’t want anyone else to try and steal our copyrighted material, such as our school logo, which is very unique to us. We always say in my office “ we have to protect the brand” whenever we our designing something that would require us to use the school logo. One thing that I think is a growing concern is the ReMix culture. Don’t get me wrong I love some of those videos on YouTube that are remixed. I get a kick out of them, I post them on Facebook for other people to view, maybe I shouldn't be doing that. I also think, as the presidential election gets closer we will see more and more of those types of videos being created. At some point we will have to decided how far is to far, what is the time limit one can use a video clip to remix something. Very interesting food for thoughts! Katie Ross  


My Comment: Hi Katie, Full Sail is a great place and I am glad they protect themselves with the copyright laws. I agree as educators we should know about that, but I do have to say personally I learned some new information this month. Your working environment keep you up to date and provides training for you, that is awesome. I have been at my high school now for 9 years and have only had one in-service training on this issue. Is that right? Of course not. I don't think I have violated any of the copyright laws so far. My students having special needs so far have not been in situations where this issue readily comes up. I will "train" for sure when it does. The issue of remixing, I am so new to that whole thing it is hard to give an opinion on it. I watched that video twice, I was in awe. I had no clue! Right now I fall on the side of creativity, so remixing is that for sure,as long as the original artist is good with it. If not then the laws need to be tweak to address the whole remix scene. David